


Love Calls You By Your Name

by wintergrey



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-10-23
Packaged: 2017-12-30 05:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintergrey/pseuds/wintergrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of ME3 (headcanon fix-it ending), the world is still at war, Trajan Shepard and Karin Chakwas are in different places, different chains of command, and he comes around to find out whether or not he can convince her to call him by his first name, at last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Calls You By Your Name

“Heard someone needed a case of pressure dressings.” The voice was familiar but out of place in the dimly lit bunker that was serving as a medical clinic.

“Commander?” Karin ducked past an intern and made for the tunnel that led to the surface. “Is that you?”

It couldn’t be anyone else, of course, but she could hardly believe it. Shepard stood under one of the few lamps; the yellow glow made his skin sallow and picked out the mass of scars that scored the left side of his face. The case—the precious case—was tucked under his right arm. The left arm hung awkwardly at his side. 

“In what’s left of the flesh. I wish it were ice wine but I thought you’d appreciate this more.” It _was_ him, looming larger than life with the same bright eyes and the often-broken Roman nose and what was left of the crooked grin.

“Yes, I’d rather see my patients healed than anything else, you know me.” She wanted to hug him but instead she took the case and handed it to a nurse. “Take that back to the post-op ward,” she ordered. 

“Things seem to be running smoothly here.” 

The clinic was constantly on high alert, almost always low on supplies, and in danger of being evacuated at any moment but it really was going well—even if they were using archaic fuel generators to keep the lights on and a one-hundred-year old reservoir of water filtered through a makeshift osmosis system. They were saving Alliance lives, which was everything Karin had ever wanted. She didn’t even miss being on a ship. Between bombing runs shaking the earth and the endless huff and groan of the generators, she could hardly tell the difference. Trust Shepard to see it for what it was and not simply chaos and confusion. 

“It’s better than I’d expected. It’s almost quiet in here at the moment.” The waiting area—crates arranged to resemble seating and an old door laid over two cabinets to make a desk—was only half full. Some nights there wasn’t room to walk for the injured lying on the floor. 

“They could use you up on the command ship but I know you need to be here.” Shepard put his good hand on her shoulder. “This is fine work, Karin. You’re making us proud.”

“Thank you, Commander.” Karin blinked to clear her eyes. She was just tired and the compliment was unexpected. “If you have the time, I could take a look at your arm. I wish they could have done more for you when they found you after the Crucible. Garrus mentioned that it was quite bad still.”

“If it’ll make you feel better,” Shepard said, following her to the examination area. It was just a half-dozen gurneys with curtains around them and some overhead lighting but it worked well enough. The diagnostic equipment she’d scrounged from wreckage was shared between all six beds. “Well, not just that. It _is_ giving me a little trouble.”

“Only a little, and yet you admit it?” Karin waved him up onto the first open gurney. “It must be very painful, I know you.” 

“Something like that.” Shepard hopped up obediently and sat, thumping his armoured heels against the gurney like a child. Some things didn’t change, he never could simply sit still. “By the way, it’s not Commander anymore.”

“Ah, yes.” Karin reached around the curtain to snag the neural scanner cart. “It’s Colonel now. I apologize. Take that armour off, Colonel, this old equipment doesn’t interface with the systems the way the _Normandy_ ’s scanners did. All it’ll tell you right now is that you’re wearing armour.”

“Well, I was rather hoping it was Trajan, now that you don’t serve on my ship and since at least I’m off-duty. I’m pretty sure you are, too, not that you ever paid any attention to that when you were on the _Normandy_.” 

“I’m not sure, Commander. You’ll be lucky if I remember to call you Colonel.” Karin focused on his ruined arm and not his bare, coppery chest. “I’m getting old, I can’t make that kind of shift as easily as you young people.”

“You have ten years on me, Karin,” Shepard said, laughing. “Barely any time at all. We’ve known each other for half that time and it feels like I met you yesterday. I realize you need to wear your wise elder persona to keep us in line when we’re on the ship but that’s hardly all of you.”

“What a mess.” Karin lost track of the conversation when she took his hand in hers and tried, gently, to uncurl his fingers. His arm was twisted red and black scars, the muscle missing in some places and nothing but skin left over bone. “What did the medics do to you when they found you, give you a bandaid and a lollipop? I’m still not convinced you should have kept this arm at all. I’m so angry at them. And the Protheans. They built a machine that lobotomized all the Reapers, and they built an escape mechanism, but they didn’t build it well enough not to get you hurt. Can’t anyone do things right?” 

“It’ll heal.” Shepard’s hand closed on hers—weakly, but he did have some grip. “Karin.”

“What?” she snapped, more harshly than she’d intended but he was interfering in her examination. Damn man. Some things never changed. She gave up on it for the moment and met his eyes so he’d get on with whatever he wanted and she could get back to work. 

“You’re really beautiful.” A slow smile suffused Shepard’s scarred features with warmth and brightened his dark eyes. “Even when you’re mad at me.” 

“I’m _what_?” Karin couldn’t parse what he was saying, it made absolutely no sense. 

“I said—you’re really beautiful.” Shepard tucked strands of her hair back behind her ear with his good hand. 

Shepard didn’t look feverish. His eyes were focused. There were no signs that she would associate with a stroke or poison or intoxication. 

“Are you mad?” Maybe that was it, he’d finally lost his mind. Or she’d lost hers.

“I don’t think so. I thought I was just stating a fact. You are. Good thing one of us still is, right?” His grin had always been roguish, the recent scarring just made it more so. 

“Now, it’s not that bad.” Her first instinct was to comfort him, whether he needed it or not. In her mind’s eye, he was still the reticent, handsome young hero who’d first stepped aboard the _Normandy_. Now, his sleek, braided black hair was shot through with silver, there were lines on his face that weren’t reminders of surgeries or battles, his eyes weren’t entirely, perfectly, human—not when she looked closely enough to see the circuitry lurking in his deep green irises. 

“It’s bad enough, but I never much cared about that. You never seemed to notice that I was pretty, anyway.” Shepard winked at her and her cheeks heated infuriatingly. 

“I observed, Commander. I simply didn’t allow it to affect our interactions.” That much was true. Everyone else practically falling at his feet had been highly detrimental to general productivity. “It wouldn’t have been appropriate.” 

“Trajan.” He put the fingers of his good hand under her chin, lightly, and she became aware—belatedly—that she wasn’t simply being teased, she was being seduced. Flattered. Admired. Pursued. “I won’t ask again if you don’t want to say it. No hard feelings. I’ll still think you walk on water and work miracles.” 

“I’ve always liked your first name. It’s terribly noble.” Everything was just slightly surreal, as though the world were crooked on its axis. The butterflies in her stomach were terrifically disconcerting. She was at least thirty years too old for butterflies. “It suits you perfectly, Trajan.” As soon as she said it, her throat was tight and her nose was hot and her eyes stung. “I always thought it suited you a little too well for your own good, frankly.”

“You never were fond of my heroics.” His callused thumb was gentle against her lips. 

“Not in the least.” Karin looked down at her hand still caught in his. “Not when things like this were the result.” She ran her free hand over his forearm—maybe it was more salvageable than she’d first thought. She would have tried to save it if she’d been there. “At least I was there for most of it, to make sure you got better results.”

“You were always there, Karin. I’m not the only noble one here.” Shepard tipped her chin up so that she had to look at him. “I didn’t just appreciate having you there for your medical skills. You were a constant. My dear friend. What you’re doing here is important but I’ll admit to being a little resentful. I miss you. On the other hand, you not being under my command anymore means I can do this.” He leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. 

“What on earth are you doing, Trajan?” She couldn’t muster up an edge to her words. No one had kissed her in ages, and even then it hadn’t felt quite like that. 

“A very bad job of getting you to kiss me back, apparently.” Shepard gave her a look of wry disappointment that was so comical she laughed in spite of herself. 

“You’re impossible.” 

Something in her let go with the laughter, tension she didn’t know she’d been holding fled, and she put her arms around him the way she’d wanted to do time and again. How could she not want to, she always asked herself, when he was so important to her? It was normal for her to want to take care of him the way he took care of everyone else. But it wasn’t just that, not anymore. He wrapped his bad arm around the small of her back to pull her in against him, twined the fingers of his good hand in her hair, and kissed her again. 

She wasn’t quite prepared for him, for how passionately he kissed her, but she yielded and adapted. The years of pent-up desire came through clearly in the heat of his mouth and the clench of his hand in her hair, in the way his tongue invaded her mouth and the low noise he made in the back of his throat when she recovered enough to kiss him back. He was everything she’d dreamed of back when she was a foolish, flighty thing who still believed in romance and adventure and happy endings. 

“Just highly improbable,” he murmured, when they stopped to breathe. “It’s why I’m still here with you.” 

Karin was flushed and unsteady, she felt like that girl for the first time in decades. For the first time in decades, she wasn’t ashamed of having been that girl. She’d known what she wanted then and, in spite of the odds, it had found her. 

“With me,” she repeated, turning it over in her head, making sense of the fact that it mattered. 

“Very important, that part.” Shepard leaned his forehead against hers, his eyes closed, and held onto her. 

“I’m starting to understand that.” She stroked his scarred cheek. Already it was as dear to her as the other. It was his now, and she had no other criteria for judging it. 

“So, when are you off-duty, Doctor Chakwas?” His hand was gentle in her hair now, feathering through it over and over.  

“I have one last patient to attend to, then I’m done. He tends to be difficult, though. Haven’t even done his scans.” 

“And if he behaves himself?” Shepard pulled back to give her a little smile that made her heart flutter. 

“Hardly any time at all.”

“After the last five years, I can wait a little longer.” 

“Fifteen minutes more.” Karin kissed him on the mouth, because she could. Because she didn’t want to miss another chance. “And then I’m all yours.”


End file.
